philosophy (Rev #78) in nLab

Philosophy

Scope

In the philosophical part of nnLab we discuss higher category theory and its repercussions in philosophy. More widely, the entries on philosophy in nLab should also contain philosophy of mathematics in general, and of logic and foundations in particular. As it is usual for philosophy and the study of thought, it is usefully carried on via study of historical thinkers and their ideas, hence some idea-related aspects of the history of mathematics are welcome.

Nonscope

There are many articles which are not directly philosophical, but rather essays on general mathematics, often opinion pieces on what is important and so on. Although mathematicians will often speak of their ‘philosophy’, this is not philosophy per se, but it may be relevant to an understanding of the nature of mathematics through its practice, see, for instance, development and current state of mathematics.

Idea of relevance of higher categories

Philosophical interest in n-categories may be characterised as belonging to one of two kinds.

• Metaphysical: The formation of a new language which may prove to be as important for philosophy as predicate logic was for Bertrand Russell and the analytic philosophers he inspired (see, e.g., Corfield 20).

• Illustrative of mathematics as intellectual enquiry: Such a reconstitution of the fundamental language of mathematics reveals much about the discipline as a tradition of enquiry stretching back several millennia, for instance, the continued willingness to reconsider basic concepts (see, e.g., Corfield 12, Corfield 19).

metaphysics

• Higher category theory and its associated type theories, such as homotopy type theory provides a new foundation for mathematics - logical and philosophical.

• Higher category theory refines the notion of sameness to allow more subtle variants, adhering to the principle of equivalence.

• There ought to be a categorified logic, or 2-logic. There are some suggestions that existing work on modal logic is relevant. Blog discussion: I, II, III, IV, V. Mike Shulman’s project: 2-categorical logic.

• Homotopy type theory may be thought of as a vertical categorification of logic to (∞,1)(\infinity,1).

• Higher category theory may provide the right tools to take physics forward. A Prehistory of n-Categorical Physics See also physics.

• higher category theory and physics, geometry of physics

• More speculatively, category theory may prove useful in biology.

Enquiry

“Mathematical wisdom, if not forgotten, lives as an invariant of all its (re)presentations in a permanently self–renewing discourse.” (Yuri Manin)

To categorify mathematical constructions properly, one must have understood their essential features. This leads us to consider what it is to get concepts ‘right’. Which kind of ‘realism’ is suitable for mathematics? Which virtues should a mathematical community possess to further its ends: a knowledge of its history, close attention to instruction and the sharing of knowledge, a willingness to admit to what is currently lacking in its programmes?

Philosophical positions

• Platonism

• idealism

  • objective idealism

  • subjective idealism

• positivism

• universal exceptionalism

References and links

• foundations and logic, logic, reasoning
• category (philosophy), modality
• logos (in philosophy), Nous
• history of mathematics, structuralism, opinions on development of mathematics
• metaphysics
• hermeticism, mysticism, gnosticism, speculative philosophy
• Science of Logic
• analytic philosophy
• philosophy of mathematics, predicative mathematics
• philosophy of science, philosophy of physics
• Judea Pearl
• Gravity and Grace
• Michael Friedman

General

• wikipedia: philosophy of mathematics; wikipedia.ru Философия математики
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “A peer reviewed academic resource”
• Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy online, contents
• Stewart Shapiro, The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mathematics and logic, Oxford University Press 2005
• free-philosophy-ebooks at openculture
• Less Wrong Wiki “a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality”; including Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Epistemology 101

Books

• Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik ( Science of Logic )

  • unity of opposites
    • becoming :\colon nothing ⊣\dashv being

• Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy

• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

• Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

• Albert Lautman, Mathematics, ideas and the physical real, 2011 translation by Simon B. Duffy; English edition of Les Mathématiques, les idées et le réel physique, Librairie Philosophique, J. VRIN, 2006

• Michael D. Potter, Set theory and its philosophy: a critical introduction, Oxford Univ. Press 2004

• Fernando Zalamea, Filosofía sintética de las matemáticas contemporáneas, (Spanish) Obra Selecta. Editorial Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, 2009. 231 pp. MR2599170, ISBN: 978-958-719-206-3, pdf. Transl. into English by Zachary Luke Fraser: Synthetic philosophy of contemporary mathematics, Sep. 2011. bookpage. Some excerpts here.

• David Corfield, Towards a philosophy of real mathematics, Cambridge University Press, 2003, gBooks

• Saunders MacLane, Mathematics, form and function, Springer-Verlag 1986, xi+476 pp. MR87g:00041, wikipedia

• George Lakoff, Rafael E. Núñez, Where mathematics comes from, Basic Books 2000, xviii+493 pp. MR2001i:00013

• Yuri I. Manin, Mathematics as Metaphor: Selected Essays of Yuri Manin, Amer. Math. Soc. 2007

• Ralf Krömer, Tool and object: A history and philosophy of category theory, Birkhäuser 2007

• Jean-Pierre Marquis, From a geometrical point of view: a study of the history and philosophy of category theory, Springer, 2008

• Ian Hacking, Why is there philosophy of mathematics at all?, Cambridge University Press 2014

• William Bragg Ewald, From Kant to Hilbert, From Kant to Hilbert: Readings in the Foundations of Mathematics, 2 vols. (original readings in English translation)

• Roland Omnès, Converging Realities -- Toward a common philosophy of physics and mathematics, Princeton University Press, 2005

• David Corfield, Modal homotopy type theory, Oxford University Press 2020 (ISBN: 9780198853404)

Articles

• Glenn G. Parsons, James Robert Brown, Platonism, metaphor, and mathematics, Dialogue 43 (2004), no. 1, 47–66, MR2004k:00004
• John Baldwin, Model theoretic perspectives on the philosophy of mathematics, pdf
• Yu. I. Manin, Mathematical knowledge: internal, social and cultural aspects, arXiv:math.HO/0703427; Georg Cantor and his heritage, arxiv/math.AG/0209244; Truth as value and duty: lessons of mathematics, arxiv/0805.4057
• M. G. Katz, E. Leichtnam, Commuting and noncommuting infinitesimals, Amer. Math. Monthly 120 (2013), no. 7, 631-641 arxiv/1304.0583
• M. G. Katz, Thomas Mormann, Infinitesimals as an issue in neo-Kantian philosophy of science, arxiv/1304.1027
• Mikhail Gromov, Ergostructures, Ergologic and the Universal Learning Problem: Chapters 1, 2, 3. (2013) pdf; Structures, Learning and Ergosystems: Chapters 1-4, 6 (2011) pdf
• William Lawvere, Cohesive Toposes and Cantor's "lauter Einsen"
• Jeremy Avigad, Mathematics and language, arxiv/1505.07238
• David Corfield, Narrative and the Rationality of Mathematical Practice, in A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur (eds.), Circles Disturbed, Princeton, 2012, (preprint).

Some philosophical aspects of the role of category theory are touched upon in some parts of the introductory paper

• Jean-Pierre Marquis, What is category theory?, pdf can be found at academia.edu

Talks

• David Corfield, The Dynamics of Mathematical Reason, slides 1, slides 2